ALEXANDERS'S WORSHIP IN AMPHIPOLIS
L. Kaliambos (Kaliambos-Natural Philosophy) January 2015 ' USING THE HISTORICAL SOURCES AND APPLYING A COMBINATORY METHOD I DISCOVERED THAT THE AMPHIPOLIS CONE PYRAMID HAS A DIAMETER EQUAL TO THE ONE ALEXANDRIAN STADION = 157.5 m. SO CONFIRMING THE HISTORICAL SOURCES IT WAS MADE BY ALEXANDER’S ARCHITECT DINOCRATES FOR THE WORSHIP OF THE DIVINE HERO HEPHAESTION. THE TOMB INCLUDES THE ASTRONOMICAL NUMBERS 7, 12 AND 3 = (7X12)/28) AND THE GOLDEN SECTION OF CARYATIDS GIVEN BY φ = ( 1 + 50.5)/2. DENOCRATES PLANNED ALSO THE TWO SPHINXES SIMILAR TO THOSE OF MEMPHIS IN EGYPT WHERE EARLIER WAS CONSTRUCTED THE TOMB OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. IT MEANS THAT THE HEPHAESTION TOMB WAS ALSO THE PLACE WHERE MACEDONIANS WORSHIPED THEIR KING ALEXANDER THE GREAT AS A HERO LIKE HERACLES-ZEUS. THIS PHOTO IS FROM THE INTERVIEW I GAVE WITH THE TITLE " AMPHIPOLIS, HEPHAESTION, AND ALEXANDER THE GREAT" TO THE AUTHOR OF THE SPIRITUAL THESSALY, Mrs. DIMITRA BARDANI, THROUGH THE TV THESSALIA (GREECE). ' NOTE THAT THE AMPHIPOLIS TOMB REVEALS THE MATH OF ANCIENT ASTRONOMY WHICH DID MUCH FOR THE PROGRESS OF ASTRONOMY AND OF FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS AT THE TIME OF GALILEO AND NEWTON. UNFORTUNATELLY IN THE ABSENCE OF A DETAILED KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE ASTRONOMY OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS AND GREEK MATHEMATICIANS THE EXCAVATION TEAM OF AMPHIPOLIS HAS NOT RELATED THE DIMENSIONS OF THE AMPHIPOLIS TOMB WITH THE WELL KNOWN ALEXANDRIAN STADION = 157.5 m. According to the History of Greek People ( Ekdotike Athenon, Volume Δ, pages 105-110) Alexander the Great in Egypt having the secrets from the oracle of Ammon ordered his architect Denocrates for planning the foundation of Alexandria. Surprisingly in November 2014, using a diagram of the “History of Alexandria-WIKIPEDIA” and applying a combinatory method I discovered that the perimeter P of the walls of Alexandria include the astronomical numbers 7, 12, and 3 = (7X12)/28. For example I found that P = 7X12 = 84 stadia, because the central road in the diagram named DROMOS is x = 31.5 stadia, while the central perpendicular road y = 10.5 stadia. I discovered also the algebra used by Dinocrates for determining x and y as x/y = 3 and P = 2(x+y) = 7X12 = 84 stadia Solving these two equations Dinocrates got x = 31.5 stadia and y = 10.5 stadia It is of interest to note that the same astronomical numbers I discovered also for the Amphipolis cone pyramid, which means that it is the monument made for the Divine Hero Hephaestion by the same architect.( See my CORRECT HEPHAESTION TOMB). For example the total height Y of the pyramid cone is given by Y = (7+12) / (7X12) stadia . (See my “REVIEW OF AMPHIPOLIS PRESS CONFERENCE”). ALEXANDER'S WORSHIP AND THE PROBLEM OF PROSKYNESIS According to the HISTORY OF GREEK PEOPLE VOLUME Δ Alexander the Great as a King of Asia tried to introduce the worship called proskynesis. For example in the "Alexander the god-Livius we read that Alexander had already started to wear elemen proskynesists from the Persian royal dress . In the summer of 327 the 'king of Asia' tried to introduce proskynesis at his court, and this time it caused a storm of protests. In many cities of ancient Greece people thought that Alexander's outrageous act meant that he wanted to be venerated as a god. However, they were wrong, because the Persian custom was not intended as such. On the other hand, it is possible that Alexander was looking for a way in which his subjects could venerate their new god. If this is correct, the introduction of the Persian court ritual was meant as a first step toward the cult of Alexander, precisely as the Macedonians and Greeks understood it. 'ALEXANDER AS ZEUS AFTER THE INDIAN CAMPAIGN ' Also in the "Alexander the god- Livius" one reads: "Receiving divine honors and being considered the son of a god was one thing, being called a god was something else. However, Heracles - son of Zeus but mortal man- had shown that it was possible that a great king as a hero like Alexander could become a god". According to the History of Greek People ( Volume Δ, from page 226 to page 230) it was called Apotheosis. After the Indian campaign, Alexander's demand to be venerated as a god was promoted more vigorously ( page 205). At Athens in March 323 BC , a debate took place whether the Macedonian king should receive divine honors; the precise details are unclear, but seem to presuppose an order. The island Thasos which is near Amphipolis seems to have decreed the worship of Alexander. After the death of Hephaestion (page 208) Alexander sent messengers to the oracle at Siwa to ask if Ammon would permit Hephaestion to be worshipped as a god. When the reply came saying he might be worshipped as a divine hero, Alexander having the secrets of the oracle in Spring of 323 BC ordered his architect Dinocrates for planning in Babylon a very expensive funeral monument, called Pyre, for the Divine Hero Hephaestion having a base at the size of one stadion = 157.5 m . Surprisingly in November 2014, I discovered that the Amphipolis cone pyramid has a base of a diameter equal to the one Alexandrian stadion = 157.5 m, which means that it is the monument for the worship of the Divine Hero Hephaestion made by Dinocrates. (See my CONFUSING KASTA TOMB AND GEOMETRY). Soon after the death of Alexander (Summer of 323 BC) that expensive monument, called Pyre, was canceled by Perdiccas and the Macedonian army (page 245). Also in “Hephaestion –WIKIPEDIA” one reads: “It is possible that the pyre was not burnt, but that it was actually intended as a tomb or lasting memorial; if so, it is likely that it was never completed, as there are references to expensive, uncompleted projects at the time of Alexander's own death.” Shortly after Alexander's death in Babylon ( pages 251-253) the possession of Alexander’s body became a subject of negotiations between Perdiccas, Ptolemy I Soter, and Seleucus I Nicator. According to Nicholas J. Saunders, while Babylon was the "obvious site" for Alexander's resting place, some favored to inter Alexander in the Argead burial at Aegae, modern Vergina. Aegae was one of the two originally proposed resting places, according to Saunders, the other being Siwa Oasis, and in 321 BC Perdiccas chose Aegae. The body, however, was hijacked en route by Ptolemy I Soter who initially buried Alexander in Memphis of Egypt. Nevertheless the American archaeologist Dorothy King after the discovery of the Amphipolis cone pyramid on November 5, 2014 made a confusing hypothesis that the Amphipolis tomb was intended for Alexander the Great and probably was ordered by Alexander himself and built under his mother’s supervision, although she eliminated the possibility that Alexander was actually buried there. ( See“Dorothy King: Why she believes the Amphipolis tomb was intended for Alexanderthe Great”). According to Plutarch, who visited Alexandria, Python of Catana and Seleucus were sent to a serapeum to ask the oracle whether Alexander's body should be sent to Alexandria and the oracle answered positively. In the late 4th or early 3rd century BC Alexander's body was transferred from the Memphis tomb to Alexandria for reburial[ (by Ptolemy Philadelphus in c. 280 BC, according to Pausanias). Later Ptolemy Philopator placed Alexander's body in Alexandria's communal mausoleum. The mausoleum was called the Soma or Sema, which means "body" in Greek. By 274 BC Alexander was already entombed in Alexandria. On the other hand after the death of Perdiccass, in the treaty of Triparadisus (321 BC) Antipater participated in a new division of Alexander's great kingdom. He appointed himself supreme regent of all Alexander's empire and was left in control of Greece as guardian of Alexander's son Alexander IV and brother Philip III. Having quelled a mutiny of his troops and commissioned Antigonus to continue the war against Eumenes and the other partisans of Perdiccas, Antipater returned to Macedonia, arriving there in 320 BC ( page 253 ), where the Greek archaeologist Katerina Peristeri (2012) discovered the Amphipolis cone pyramid. In other words the canceled Pyre in Babylon was replaced by the cone pyramid at Amphipolis. Note that my discovery of the one stadion of the circular base confirms the hypothesis of the excavation team that the tomb at Amphipolis was planned by Dinocrates for a hero of Alexander’s generals. ( See my TOMB OF HEPHAESTION IN AMPHIPOLIS). However on November 12, 2014 the archaeologist Dorothy King changing her previous hypothesis of November 5, concluded incorrectly that Hephaestion was buried in Amphipolis not in 320 BC but after Alexander’s order. In “ Dorothy King’s Ph Diva: Amphipolis : The bones..” one reads: “ Hephaestion died before Alexander, and Alexander ordered his body returned to Macedonia in an elaborate funerary cortege to be buried in a magnificent tomb there”. On the other hand the British author Andrew Chugg based on the discovered female sphinxes at Amphipolis believes that the Amphipolis tomb was intended for Olympias. The author Chugg wrote that a similar pair of female sphinxes was found by Mariette at the Serapeum at Saqqara near Memphis dated to the reign of the first Ptolemy by Lauer & Picard, mainly on the basis of an associated inscription: the Serapeum at Saqqara is also a strong candidate for the site of the first tomb of Alexander the Great ( See “ Is the mother of Alexander the Great in the tomb of at Amphipolis?”). According to the History of Greek People ( Volume Δ page 266 ), after winning in battle, Olympias captured and executed Philip III Arrhidaeus and his wife Eurydice in October 317 BC, as well as Cassander’s brother and a hundred of his partisans. Cassander bloched and besieged Olympias in Pydna and forced her to surrender. One of the terms of the capitulation had been that Olympias's life would be saved, but Cassander had decided to execute her, sparing only temporarily the lives of Roxana and Alexander IV (they were later executed in 310 BC). When the fortress of Pydna fell Kassandros ordered Olympias killed but the soldiers refused to kill the mother of Alexander. In the end, the families of her many victims stoned her to death with the approval of Cassander, who is also said to have denied to her body the rights of burial. According to the Greek Wikipedia ( ΟΛΥΠΙΑΔΑ-ΒΙΚΙΠΑΙΔΕΙΑ) the tomb of Olympias is believed to be at Makrygialos near Pydna. Now it is of interest to note that Dinocrates, who used in Amphipolis the same astronomical numbers as those of the foundation of Alexandria, had planned also two sphinxes similar to those at Memphis of Egypt. So one must hypothesize that Macedonians in the tomb of the Divine Hero Hephaestion wanted to worship also their King Alexander the Great as a Hero like Heracles- son of Zeus but mortal man. ' ' 'APOTHEOSIS OF RULERS AS DIVINE HEROES ' Because of the theocratic form of their government, and the religious character which sovereign power assumed in their eyes, the peoples of the great nations of the Orient — Persia, Chaldea, Egypt — paid divine honors to living rulers. Hero-worship had familiarized the minds of the Greeks with the idea that a man by illustrious deeds can become a god, and contact with the Orient made them ready to accept the grosser form of apotheosis by which divine honors were offered to the living. Philip of Macedon was honored as a god at Amphipolis, and Alexander the Great, not only claimed descent from the gods of Egypt, but decreed that he should be worshipped in the cities of Greece. After his death, and probably largely as the result of the teaching of Euhemerus, that all the gods were deified men, the custom of apotheosis became very prevalent among the Greeks. (See “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA : Apotheosis- New Advent”). After the death of Alexander another innovation in the Hellenistic period was the institution of cults dedicated to the rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms. The first of these was established under Alexander, whose conquests, power, and status had elevated him to a degree that required special recognition. His successors continued his worship to the point where in Egypt under Ptolemy I Soter, we find Alexander being honored as a god. Ptolemy's son Ptolemy II Philadelphus proclaimed his late father a god, and made himself a living god. By doing so, the Ptolemies were adapting earlier Egyptian ideas in pharaonic worship. Elsewhere, practice varied; a ruler might receive divine status without the full status of a god, as occurred in Athens in 307 BCE, when Antigonus I Monophthalmus and Demetrius I Poliorcetes were honored as saviors (soteres) for liberating the city, and, as a result, an altar was erected; an annual festival was founded; and an office of the "priest of the Saviours" was introduced. Temples dedicated to rulers were rare, but their statues were often erected in other temples, and the kings would be worshiped as "temple-sharing gods." ( See “Hellenistic religion- WIKIPEDIA”). Coins depicting the face of Alexander the Great were discovered inside the Amphipolis tomb, announced head of excavations Katerina Peristeri during a press conference on November 29, 2014. Peristeri said that the coins are dated around the 2nd century B.C., the era of the last Macedonian kings. It means that the Amphipolis cone pyramid made by Dinocrates for the worship of the Divine Hero Hephaestion was also a place where coins and statues of Alexander the Great were often erected, because their great King as a Divine Hero would be worshiped. For example a number of statues of Alexander the Great found in Italy probably are the soils of the TOMB RAIDERS OF AMPHIPOLIS. When the Romans began to dominate large parts of the Greek world, Rome's senior representatives there were given the same divine honors as were Hellenistic rulers. This was a well-established method for Greek city-states to declare their allegiance to an outside power; such a cult committed the city to obey and respect the king as they obeyed and respected Apollo or any of the other gods. Isocrates said of Philip II of Macedon that after he conquered the Persian Empire, there would be nothing for him to attain but to become a god; the city of Amphipolis, and a private society at Athens, worshiped him even without this conquest; he himself set out his statue, dressed as a god, as the thirteenth of the Twelve Olympians. But it was Philip's son Alexander the Great who made the divinity of kings standard practice among the Greeks. The Egyptians accepted him as Pharaoh, and therefore divine, after he drove the Persians out of Egypt; other nations received him as their traditional divine or quasi-divine ruler as he acquired them. In 324 BC Alexander sent word to the Greek cities that they should also make him a god; they did so, with marked indifference– which did not stop them from rebelling when they heard of his death next year. ( page 229). His immediate successors, the Diadochi, offered sacrifices to Alexander, and made themselves gods even before they claimed to be kings; they put their own portraits on the coinage, whereas the Greeks had always reserved this for a god or for an emblem of the city. When the Athenians allied with Demetrius Poliorcetes, eighteen years after the deification of Alexander, they lodged him in the Parthenon with Athena, and sang a hymn extolling him as a present god, who heard them, as the other gods did not. Euhemerus, a contemporary of Alexander, wrote a fictitious history of the world, which showed Zeus and the other established gods of Greece as mortal men, who had made themselves into gods in the same way; Ennius appears to have translated this into Latin some two centuries later, in Scipio Africanus' time. The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids claimed godhood as long as they lasted; they may have been influenced in this by the Persian and Egyptian traditions of divine kings – although the Ptolemies had separate cults in Egyptian polytheism, as Pharaoh, and in the Greek. The Roman magistrates who conquered the Greek world were fitted into this tradition The Romans and the Greeks gave religious reverence to and for human beings in ways that did not make the recipients gods; these made the first Greek apotheoses easier. Similar middle forms appeared as Augustus approached official divinity. The Macedonians did not consider the dead to be gods, but they did pay them homage, and give them sacrifices – using different rituals than those for the gods of Olympus. The Greeks called the extraordinary dead – founders of cities and the like –heroes; in the simplest form, hero cult was the burial and the memorials which any respectable Greek family gave their dead, but paid for by their City in perpetuity. It was not always easy to distinguish between heroic honors, veneration for a man's good spirit, worship of his patron deity, worship of the Fortune of a city he founded, and worship of the man himself. One might slide into another; In Egypt, there was a cult of Alexander as god and as founder of Alexandria; Ptolemy I Soter had a separate cult as founder of Ptolemais, which presumably worshipped his daimon and then gave him heroic honors, but in his son's reign, the priests of Alexander also worshipped Ptolemy and Berenice as the SaviorGods (theoi soteres). At the Amphipolis Press Conference ( November 29, 2014 ) the leading of excavation team Katerina Peristeri said also that she had found coins of the third century AD along with two marble shields that are believed to have been part of the lion sculpture that once stood at the top of Kasta Hill. While Peristeri appears to be hedging her bets on a Macedonian General of Alexander the Great’s army, due to the lion that once stood atop the burial mound, she also referred to the fact that in the past, the burial mound was known to locals as “The Tomb of the Queen”. To avoid such confusing hypotheses I published my papers “TOMB OF HEPHAESTION IN AMPIPOLIS” and “TOMB RAIDERS OFAMPHIPOLIS”. According to the History of Greek People ( Ekdotike Athenon Volumes Δ and E) the monument was made by Dinocrates for the DIVINE HERO HEPHAESTION and the Roman General Aimilius Paulus in 167 BC was the first looter of the Hephaestion tomb. However later fanatic Christian priest ( from 330 to 337 AD) , like vandals, destroyed temples and monuments. Whereas during the era of emperor Julian ( 361-363 AD ) Macedonians under a policy of a new worship of Alexander the Great were able to protect the cone pyramid of the DIVINE HERO HEPHAESTION from any future vandalism. Nevertheless lead archaeologist Katerina Peristeri on November 29, 2014 began the presentation by saying that the Kasta Tomb was destroyed by the Romans in the 3rd Century AD. According to her, the Romans destroyed the enclosure of the tomb in the 3rd century AD. ( See “Culture Ministry Releases Photos of the Amphipolis skeleton”). However such a hypothesis cannot be justified by the historical sources. According to the History of Greek People ( Ekdotike Athenon Volume ΣΤ page 200) during the third century AD under a new policy of Roman Empire the worship of Alexander the Great was revived in Macedonia. On this point I emphasized that during the third century AD a Christian minority under a persecutory policy was not powerful for destroying monuments of ancient Greek culture. Early church historian Eusebius describes Severus as a persecutor. Diocletian's accession in 284 is connected with Diocletian's preference for autocratic government, combined with his self-image as a restorer of past Roman glory. In the winter of 302, Galerius urged Diocletian to begin a general persecution of the Christians. Persecutory policies varied in intensity across the empire. Where Galerius and Diocletian were avid persecutors, Constantius was unenthusiastic. Later persecutory edicts, including the calls for all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods, were not applied in his domain. His son, Constantine, on taking the imperial office in 306, restored Christians to full legal equality and returned property that had been confiscated during the persecution. Galerius ended the persecution in the East in 311. Constantine and Licinius, Severus's successor, signed the "Edict of Milan" in 313, which offered a more comprehensive acceptance of Christianity than Galerius's edict had provided. Licinius ousted Maximinus in 313, bringing an end to persecution in the East. By 324, Constantine was sole ruler of the empire, and Christianity had become his favored religion. Under this new policy after 330 fanatic Christians destroyed a large number of monuments of the ancient Greek culture. At the First Council of Nicaea (325) Constantine united and re-founded the empire under an absolute head of state by divine dispensation and was honored as the first Christian Imperial divus. On his death he was venerated and was held to have ascended to heaven. Philostorgius later criticised Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine. His three sons re-divided their Imperial inheritance: Constantius II was an Arian – his brothers were Nicene. Constantine's nephew Julian, Rome's last non-Christian emperor, rejected the "Galilean madness" of his upbringing for a synthesis of neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism and universal solar cult and actively fostered religious and cultural pluralism. Under this new Roman policy of a short period the worship of Alexander the Great was revived in Amphipolis and Macedonians during the era of the emperor Julian ( 361-363 ) were able to protect the cone pyramid of the DIVINE HERO HEPHAESTION from any future vandalism. That was the last worship of Alexander the Great in Amphipolis, because shortly afterward Theodosius I (379-395) briefly re-united the Empire, officially adopted Nicene Christianity as the Imperial religion and prohbited any public religious customs of Greek culture. In “Theodosius-WIKIPEDIA” one reads: “In 393 he issued a comprehensive law that prohibited any public non-Christian religious customs, and was particularly oppressive to Manicheans. He is likely to have disbanded the ancient Olympic Games, whose last record of celebration was in 393, though archeological evidence indicates that some games were still held after this date.” . . Category:Fundamental physics concepts